Official Secrets Act Case: Witness Statements
Debate between Graham Stuart and Chris Ward(3 days, 11 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Chris Ward
As I have said many times, the Government wanted the prosecution to proceed and allowed every opportunity for evidence to be provided for it and for the CPS to gather that. The Prime Minister has already stated when he was informed that the trial was in that process. He also made it clear yesterday, in response to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), that it is not his position to interfere. The case was then dropped by the CPS independently.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The CPS has independence from Ministers; civil servants do not. The whole point of our constitution is that civil servants can never be thrown under the bus because Ministers are responsible. They own everything the civil servants do. There is no carve-out because someone has this high title of being a National Security Adviser. They are a civil servant. It was not once; it happened repeatedly in an iterative process by which the CPS asked for and said there is a gap. What is it? Will the Minister please stop trying to make out that we have a different constitution from the one we have, in which he suggests that somehow Ministers are not responsible for the behaviour of their civil servants when that is the foundation of accountability within our parliamentary system?
Chris Ward
I will refer back to what I have said already: it is not the place of Ministers, under this or previous Governments, to be vetting or interfering in evidence on that matter.